She Who Waits
by sundroptea
Summary: It seemed like the days last too long for him now. What happens when heroes come home? Ilia; Link/Midna


Title: Onwards

Author: sundroptea

Rating: PG

Summary: It seems like the days last too long for him now. What happens when heroes come home?

Author's Note: This story was formerly called "Onwards" but when I reread it I was struck by how little that fit. Also, all the typos. So, I've just cleaned it up a bit, and curbed a few turns of phrase. That, plus, the new title adds something, I think. I hope you all enjoy.

888

It seems like the days last too long for him now.

He came back to us different, older, and in his strangeness, he frightens me. When I got back from Kakariko I looked around and saw the changes everywhere else: Uli and Rusl's new baby girl, Colin looking cheerful with his new wooden sword, Jaggle's improved work ethic. I thought the end of the siege would mean only good things for everyone, and yet I thought that it would all be exactly like it was before.

I was foolish. My father even warned me, long before I had yet lain eyes on him, that the Link I'd known was perhaps not the Link who I would see riding up. I dismissed him. Silly fathers, I thought to myself, have no real idea what goes on in the hearts or minds of the children they claim to know. After all, I had seen him less than a week ago, when he came to check on me, and get some information from that scholar man who was researching underneath the sanctuary. And he wasn't really any different than my recently restored memories led me to assume. Still the same boy with his horse and his sword.

And then he came back, for good- or so he said.

He was a ragged figure in the twilight, bruised, dirty, and bone weary, a slump to his shoulders suggesting total exhaustion. He trudged in and if I hadn't of been on my way back from the spring, I'm not sure I would have seen him at all. He nodded to me- as I ran over to greet him, peppering him with ecstatic questions, and a rush of words about my time with Renado and his family. He nodded to me- and hugged me back, a quick press, and during it I could feel him shuddering like he was on the verge of collapsing completely. I grabbed his arm, alarmed, but he shook his head, his lips twisting in an attempt at a smile, and said he just needed rest. He dragged himself up his ladder and then he did something I've never seen him do. He locked his door.

He locked me out, I kept repeating to myself in utter shock. He's never done that! I'm the one who gets upset and locks him out! He waits for me to forgive him, and then… It dawned on me how selfish I was being. He had gone through who knows what to keep us all safe, and driven the monsters out of this land single handedly, and there I was begrudging him a night's uninterrupted sleep. So I went to check on Epona, and get her brushed down, and taken care of for him only to find that he had already. Despite the fact that he looked like he would gladly have slept standing up with no hesitation, he'd still made sure that Epona was happily settled.

When I stopped crying, I went home, to let the village know he was safe. As I passed by his house, I stopped, hearing muffled noises. I listened, trying to figure out what they were or if he needed something. I recoiled, wondering if he could possibly be crying himself. I had never seen him cry before either, even when he was a young boy.

-when we were eight, I dared him to climb the ladder on top of my house. It was really raining out, buckets of water just sheeting downward, and I didn't think he'd actually do it. He just gave me one of those enigmatic smiles of his that could mean anything from "Watch this!" to "Only for you."

His smiles could turn a smart girl foolish if she let them.

There was the smile, and then he was suddenly hauling himself out of my window and shimmying to the other end of the roof. Of course he slipped. In that rain, it would have been impossible not to. He landed wrong and broke his wrist and I was grounded for a month. I cried, but he didn't. And he wrote me a note for every day that I was grounded, with his good hand-

So… If he didn't cry when his bones literally snapped apart, what in this world could possibly make him cry now?

I decided that I had to be hearing things. It must just be the wind or maybe he was snoring, and he had caught a cold while journeying. I resolved to make him some soup, just in case.

888

The next day, he still hadn't come out. I waited until the evening again, figuring that he may have just slept in, considering how exhausted he'd looked the day before, and knowing that even in the best of times he was still a teenaged boy who considered sleeping a cherished hobby. Hauling my tureen of soup up a ladder was even less fun doing in person than it sounds written down, but I did it, automatically going for the knob and then having to pause. It would be better to knock, I said to myself. He might still be sleeping or perhaps in the bath, and it's his first day back, Ilia, don't be rude. Of course these were all just words in the air. I was terrified that the door would still be locked and that things would really be different forever.

I struck the door twice, sharply. I meant them to be cheerful raps, as if to say, "It's alright, silly boy. We can be fine now."

The echoes sounded like they were laughing at my naiveté.

I waited, and it was almost surreal. I don't think I'd paused at the top of his ladder since before his parents had passed. It looked different, whether from time or perspective. I remember we used to sit out here, singing nursery tales, or I would and he would either watch and pull faces, or if I asked very nicely (ahem, enough times) he'd play his old, chipped wind flute for me. One song, about an old soldier looking for a place to rest, came back to me as I stood there, stupidly clutching my pretense soup.

_Time and world enough and yet, it's nearly time to go again. Fall and fall upon the sword, but travel on 'til evermore._

There were some shuffling noises, beleaguered sounding, and then a weary face, streaked through with grime appeared at the door. He looked at me like he was too tired to even pretend that he wasn't home.

_See her face, in the distance, there? See the face of maiden fair?_

He made a noise that might have been a greeting. It came out more like a sigh, and it looked like he had to wring it from his throat. It looked like it cut his mouth as he forced it out. His face was dirty, streaked, and his eyes didn't quite focus. Well, that was fine. He was just, you know, recuperating.

_Travel on to meet her, sire, for none among us can compare._

"Hey. You look awful. I brought soup."

I tried for chipper, but of course my words were too true, too tense, to ease the air. He stepped back, but reluctantly, and I marched in, surveying the disaster.

There were packs and weapons all over. I saw a sword, large, imposing, alien propped up against his desk, and two clunking metal devices that were as scary as they looked lethal. There was a giant bow and quiver, and I saw something glinting in the corner- some kind of really shiny shield?

_Know the strength that wanes in eve, will only ever find reprove, in the heartplace where longing be. Be it in spirit or be it in sand, travel on to find that land._

I moved something that looked like a greasy mechanical spider out of the way and put my soup down, only to have Link take the spider and shove it wearily into one of the sacks he'd slung over a hook on the wall. I circled the table to climb the ladder, thinking I would open his curtains and get some light in here so I could start cleaning. After all, who could recover in a house this dusty?

"Ilia, maybe you shouldn't-" he started suddenly, only to be cut off by my shriek.

"Holy Din!" I yelped, stumbling backwards and almost falling off the platform. I noted vaguely that he had moved to catch me with his arms out, but he let them hang, along with his head, when he saw where I was looking. There was an iron ball, covered in spikes, laying before the bed, lengths of chain wreathing it. It was the most violent weapon I'd ever seen, and it was anomalous to me that Link (sweet, stalwart Link, my Link, _I remember now_) would ever have anything to do with such a thing. My first impulse was to berate him for it, and I could tell that was the reaction he was expecting but I checked myself. That was no way to help him acclimate.

"Ilia, thanks for the soup," he said, and from his voice I could tell he wasn't going to touch a spoonful of it. "But I'm really tired, and-"

_See the tears been shed for you, and know the path you walked was true. See the love that replaces doubt, and travel on to mete it out._

"Nonsense. Goddesses know the last time you had a decent meal, and I spent three hours simmering that, just for you. I don't care if I have to put it into one of those filthy bottles of yours and pour it down your throat, but you are going to get some nourishment, and then you are going to tell me exactly what it is that's turned you into a ReDead." I stood in front of him and tapped my foot. "Now. Choose. Bottle and force or quiet and painless?"

Link stared at me, then at the soup, and there wasn't one bit of him that looked in any way moved or impressed by my outburst. Then, he sighed, and sat and ate, and I thought I had won. I thought it was progress. The last rays of the day's dying sun fell across him, and the first stirrings of the evening dark sprawled at his feet, climbing up. He didn't seem to notice how the light seemed to wrap around him, and I decided to think nothing of it.

I thought I'd won, but I didn't notice how it was only when the twilight settled against him that his shoulders relaxed.

_You never find a home behind; the time for past is past untimed. Travel on, and forward too- there's nothing to reflection's hue._

888

Time passed, relentlessly.

Long summer days stretched over Ordon, the heat pulling the rays of sunlight over everything like warm yellow taffy. Summer had always been my most favorite time. The heavy, bright, eager-seeming glare that begins early and ends late, the lazy blanket of warmth over everything, the sound of the Whistle Reeds in full, glorious bloom, and the smell of fresh cut grass…

He had always loved it, too. When we were younger we'd spend hours secreted away around the bend in the river. Once we'd built a fort on the small back island. I remember how laboriously we'd struggled, to get all of that wood and thatch (scrap pieces donated or filched from Rusl, depending on whether he had his back or his front to us) down the stream, only to have the entire structure fall to pieces in the first great fall storm. It was always summer that gaveth, and the winter that taketh away.

It always had been like that, at least, before.

The few times I allowed myself to really think about it, I wondered if he noticed himself. He slipped back into life at the village easily, if not seamlessly. He went back to work at the ranch, although it was almost a joke. Herding the goats provided no challenge anymore. Whenever he'd call them in, they'd simply go, and even almost shied away from him.

It was the strangest thing.

They'd loved him before, would line up at the gates or flee to stay out in the pen with him, and now it was like… it was like they didn't know him- no, it was like they were afraid of him. And I could see in his face that it cut him deeply- well. I could see it at first.

_Travel on for what rests back? The smiles all have fallen gone, as will you before too long. For all their love, it's yours you lack._

He went hunting with Rusl, for longer and longer stretches. He would come back with his eyes a little freer, and then the sun would rise and there would be tiny lines around his mouth where his jaw had tightened. And he would look at me, and it would feel like something big was coming. Something was about to break, life was about to change, and it tasted like inevitability.

Of course I did what I could to put it off as long as possible.

888

I was sitting in his chair, the deck of cards spread out in front of me. I had an almost perfect hand. There was no way he was going to beat me this time. I was extremely busy sizing up his pile of deku seeds, so his words didn't register at first.

"Illia, I'm leaving again."

I know I must have made a sound, but I can't remember what noise it was specifically. I dropped my almost perfect cards from fingers gone compulsively nerveless. I would never win this game, not against him. My ears were ringing, and there was a screaming echo in my head- _leaving again leaving again leaving leaving leaving_-

"Illia?"

_Travel on, to where she rests, for better does she know your best. Even in your darkness too, she'll travel on to the good in you._

I looked up the ladder to where the giant steel ball had long since been spirited away from, and began to shudder.

"Illia!"

His arms came around me, supporting me as my knees gave way and leading me to his one sad chair, but it was instinct, not desire that motivated him. I could feel it in the tense way he held himself, the brief flash of pain, quickly suppressed, that flickered across the face that used to be so open. It was not me he wanted to wrap himself around. I thought I felt my throat closing, but it was probably just pieces of my shattered heart getting stuck.

"No!" I tried to deny it, but what was the point? "Why? I'm back, and you're back, and it's all fine now, and it could be like it-"

He jerked away sharply, and I quieted. No, this was not the same Link, and I should have listened to my father.

"Do you really want to know, Ills?" His voice was as soft as it ever was but there was laced in his timbre a despair that added maturity to his years. "It's not going to help you, I don't think."

I was still finding it difficult to breathe, feeling attacked by adulthood, having growing up thrust on me all at once, having to face the smashed remnants of a dream that I hadn't even really begun to conjure yet. I tried to find some sign that he didn't mean his words. (_leaving again leaving again leaving __**you**__ again_) I wanted to have him turn to me with that smile of his, and we could pretend like the past three months had never happened. I would cock my head and smart mouth him, and he would quietly dispose of all lingering remnants of… his trip (_those weapons laying in his small, dark basement would haunt me still, I know, because even as I started to imagine a desperately happy future I called myself foolish for believing that it would be possible to hide the repercussions his quest had left rippling across his life_) and then I really saw him for man he'd become.

"It might not help," I told this stranger I loved so well. "It might make it worse. But I need to hear it."

His back was straighter. Up until now, I hadn't noticed just how gaunt and drawn he'd become; his eyes were jarringly bright against the bruised and raw skin. Had he been sleeping at all? He spent long hours hunting, or whittling, or sketching, but how long had it been since he'd really had a restful sleep? He looked at me, and through me, and I could see that this was a man about to break. And I knew that there was nothing I could do for him, but I had to try. I was still his Ilia, even if he wasn't my Link. I got up slowly, and approached him warily; I half expected him to bolt.

"Ilia…"

"Link." The calm was amazing. I understood the look of a man in love. I may be young, but I saw the way Rusl looked when Colin vanished. I saw the bleak eyes of Renado when he would tell Luda of her mother. And I remember the look on my father's face when I came home, a gleam of joy in his eye that was so bright it still seemed painful. Link should have that gleam. I would do anything to give him that, even if it wasn't mine to have. I took his hands and laced our fingers and I knew that later every moment of this was going to shred me into ribbons from the inside out. But for now… "Link, how long will you be gone?"

_Forever, Ilia. There's more to life than you, and I know that now. There's a princess out there for me! What hope could you ever have to compete against_- No. He could never be as cruel as I am. He would never think that way. I hate him for it almost as much as I hate him for leaving me which put together is almost as much as I love him. The entire body of me was cracking, little lines of stress fissuring up, and it's like burning your finger on a candle. You know the pain is coming even before you feel it.

"I… If I can do what I'm going to try to do… I won't _be_ coming back."

_Cause Princess Perfect won't let her prized pet out for a visit home? Reign it in, Ilia. Don't be… yourself. Be good. For __**him.**_It was like picking at a scab, though. I couldn't let it go.

"You could still visit, even if you lived there. Castle Town isn't _that_ far a- what?" Because he had jerked back as though he were slapped, his face twisting into a rictus of some deep and buried hurt.

"Not Castle Town, Ilia."

"Then… where?" I tried to speak normally, but there was a fear growing in me, so big it started to take up all the room I usually used for air and strength and being. It came out a whisper. I'd never known more that there was so much I didn't know. Where was farther than Castle Town? Where had he _been_ that he knows of such places? Who was he, now, that was so very wise?

Then his hand brushed my cheek. Just softly, just briefly, and I knew he was still Link, my Link, and yet never mine again. His heart was so big, and I didn't have hands or heart enough to hold it.

"Someplace… Someplace else."

_Find the home you've long been denied, and know you earned all you betide. Though you're cut and cuffed and bruised, travel on through golden gates._

"Well, you'd just better say good-bye properly. None of this hiding and moping." I brushed the tears I knew I'd cry later away. This was more important. His last look of me was not going to be of a broken Ilia. "And if you don't say good-bye to the children, I don't care what kind of fancy spike-ball you have, I'll thump you."

He stood for a moment, so still, even for him. I don't think he even breathed in. But then he was crushing me to him, holding me to him in a hug like I can't remember. It was like he was embracing me for every moment we'd ever spent together, and all the ones he once dreamed of spending together and it was the best hell I've ever experienced.

He let me go slowly, and I felt him sigh into my hair. He squeezed my hand and then kept hold of it, not letting it drop the entire time he made his good-byes. I could tell he'd been thinking about this for some time, probably since the day he got back, because when we finally returned to his house, he only had to reach into a few chests to pull together everything he needed. He'd already packed.

He stood with me, the sunset washing the entire moment in an orange glow, and after he locked the door, he handed me the key. I almost protested, but… what was the point?

I pressed my forehead to Epona's warm forelock, and I thought I knew her well enough to know that she was anxious to leave too. I hid my face against her, so my voice was muffled when I spoke.

"This… place you're going… Will it be dangerous?"

"Yes."

"Are you- Do you think you'll make it?"

"I don't know. I hope so."

I handed him Epona's reigns.

"Be careful."

Oh that grin, that "I love you, I'm here, I'm Link, I'm sorry" grin.

"Aren't I always, Ills?" I snorted.

"Oh, of course. Si-Silly me." I smiled at him, even as my voice caught. He finished buckling his sword on to his back, and took my hand again. I let him draw me away from Epona, and stood before him, as the first stirrings of night began to streak through the last of the sun.

"Link, can I… Can I ask you for something?"

His arm wrapped around me, and it was so good. "Yes."

"If you can… When you're safe… Try- Try to let me know. Just a sign- something, anything, that you're ok."

It took him a moment. His voice was scratchy, and his words sounded stuck in his throat. "I'll try."

"Thank you."

And that was it. He mounted Epona easily, and began to lead her into the falling twilight.

"Link!" I called, chasing after him to the lip of the bridge.

He turned in the saddle, eyes solemn, waiting. Always so patient with his impatient Ilia.

"What- what's her name?"

And I saw it in his eyes, and I knew he'd make it to her. His place was by her side, if she loved him even half as much as he loved her. I wished him luck, silently.

"Midna," he said, and then there was nothing but the sound of hoof beats as the pair clattered away.

_Travel on to she who waits._

888

_Time and world enough and yet, it's nearly time to go again. Fall and fall upon the sword, but travel on 'til evermore._

_See her face, in the distance, there? See the face of maiden fair? Travel on to meet her, sire, for none among us can compare._

_Know the strength that wanes in eve, will only ever find reprieve, in the heartplace where longing be. Be it in spirit or be it in sand, travel on to find that land._

_See the tears been shed for you, and know the path you walked was true. See the love that replaces doubt, and travel on to mete it out._

_You never find a home behind; the time for past is past untimed. Travel on, and forward too- there's nothing to reflection's hue._

_Travel on for what rests back? The smiles all have fallen gone, as will you before too long. For all their love, it's yours you lack._

_Travel on, to where she rests, for better does she know your best. Even in your darkness, too, she'll travel on to the good in you._

_Find the home you've long been denied, and know you earned all you betide. Though you're cut and cuffed and bruised, travel on through golden gates._

_Travel on to she who waits._


End file.
